Fatal Defense Read online

  Fatal Defense

  A Jessie Black Legal Thriller

  Larry A. Winters

  Copyright © 2017 by Larry A. Winters

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Books by Larry A. Winters

  About the Author

  False Justice (Jessie Black Legal Thrillers, Book 5)

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  —Larry A. Winters

  1

  The girl looked too young to be a second-year law student, and her clothing—jeans and a baggy sweater—were way too casual for an interview. Her hands were not clutching a fancy-looking portfolio full of writing samples and extra copies of her resume. Her hair, long and brown, fell in messy ringlets around her face and down her back—a far cry from the carefully controlled styles of most interviewees. She seemed to hurry into the room and close the door with jerky, nervous energy. It wasn’t the nervousness of a typical Ivy League law student seeking a summer position. Hers was a different kind of nervousness. A more raw, desperate kind.

  Jessie Black glanced down at the resume on the table in front of her. Her first interviewee was not due for another ten minutes. “Are you Madeline Grady?”

  “Are you a prosecutor?”

  Jessie watched the girl twist her fingers together in another display of nervousness. Definitely not Madeline Grady. Probably not a student at all. But if not, why was she here? Who would want to sneak into the Penn Law fall on-campus recruiting other than an aspiring lawyer? “Why don’t you sit down?”

  The girl stepped further into the room and closed the door behind her, seeming to notice her surroundings for the first time. The interview room was small and austere, with plain, eggshell-white walls, stiff-backed swivel chairs, and a rectangular table. No prints on the walls. No windows. The table was bare except for a manila folder in which Jessie had brought copies of the resumes of the students she would be meeting today, and next to the folder, her cup of coffee. Jessie had already gulped it down, but the coffee smell lingered in the air.

  The girl sat in one of the swivel chairs. As out of place as she looked here, she also seemed strangely familiar. Had Jessie seen her somewhere before?

  “Are you okay?” Jessie said.

  “Why do you ask that?” The girl’s eyes flashed. They were green eyes, a shade not much different than her own.

  “You just seem like you’re in the wrong place. Is there someone I can call for you?”

  “I’m in the right place. I mean, if you’re a prosecutor. It said on the directory that the DA’s office is doing interviews in this room.”

  “Yes, I’m an assistant district attorney. Jessica Black.” She hesitated, then added, “You can call me Jessie.”

  “Good.” The girl tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “What’s your name?” The longer Jessie watched the girl, the stronger her instinct became that she had seen her before. But she couldn’t recall where or when that had been.

  “Carrie.”

  “Well, Carrie, how can I help you? We don’t have much time before my first interview.”

  Jessie glanced at her watch. Madeline Grady was scheduled to arrive in seven minutes, and she had no doubt the woman would be prompt. In her experience, Penn Law students tended to take their careers very seriously. Jessie certainly had, when she’d been a student here.

  She remembered her own interviews, which had taken place in the same venue—the Leonard A. Lauder Career Center, located in the McNeil Building, a cube-like structure on the picturesque Locust Walk. It was here that law firms, government agencies, and other employers conducted first round interviews with first and second-year law students. The summer positions were critical, as they often led to permanent positions after graduation. The students vied for them fiercely.

  Jessie’s calendar wasn’t quite as jam-packed as most of the interviewers’ today. Not surprisingly, the demand for cushy, high-paying summer associate gigs in giant law firms was higher than the demand for summer internships at the Philadelphia district attorney’s office. But Jessie had no problem with that. She wasn’t interested in talking to students focused on prestigious names and high salaries. She wanted to meet the students eager for courtroom experience and for a chance to make a difference. She’d been doing these interviews for years. Not much surprised her at this point. But she had not been expecting her day to begin with a strange girl appearing unannounced in her interview room.

  “Carrie,” she prompted, when the girl didn’t respond, “why are you looking for a prosecutor?”

  A hardness entered the girl’s eyes. Her stare turned flinty. “My father was murdered and the police are letting the woman who killed him get away with it. It’s not right. Someone needs to do something!”

  It occurred to Jessie that this could be some kind of prank—there were some jokers in her office and among her friends at the university—but she didn’t think so. The girl’s face was so intense it was hard to maintain eye-contact.

  “This happened here? In Philly?”

  “Yes! You don’t even know about it? And you’re a prosecutor?” Carrie’s face flushed. Her fingers twisted together with more urgency. Jessie reached out and touched the girl’s hands, stilling them.

  “There are a lot of murders in this city. Too many for me to be familiar with every one of them. I know that’s an awful thing to think about, but it’s true.”

  Carrie’s gaze lowered and she seemed to look at Jessie’s hand covering her own, but she made no move to pull away. A second later, her eyes returned to Jessie’s, and some of the hardness had dissipated.

  “My father’s murder was on the news. It’s still on the news. I hate it. It’s like they’re celebrati
ng his death. Like it’s a good thing. It seems like every day those reporters find a new way to say something terrible about him. And meanwhile the woman who killed him….” The girl’s voice seemed to catch in her throat.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Jessie said. “Why would reporters say something terrible about a murder victim—” Then she got it. Suddenly, she recognized this girl. Everything fell into place. “You’re talking about Corbin Keeley.”

  It was true that the media couldn’t get enough of Keeley, and also true that they’d painted him as a villain—and not for the first time. But that was for good reason, as far as Jessie was concerned. At the time of his death, Corbin Keeley had been a city councilman, a position he’d held for many years. The first time he’d been vilified by the media had been three or four years ago, when rumors had surfaced in the news that during his marriage—which had ended in a supposedly amicable divorce—he’d beaten his wife savagely. Somehow they’d managed to keep the abuse a secret until a photograph of his ex-wife taken during their marriage had been discovered by the ex-wife’s sister and leaked to the media. Jessie still remembered it—dark bruising had covered most of her face, one of her eyes had been swollen shut, her jaw had looked huge with swelling. And yet, Keeley had survived the torrent of outrage. He was a career politician, with clout and connections and powerful people. His ex-wife’s vocal denials of the abuse had probably helped to some extent, too, although Jessie had not found her believable. Keeley had managed to to cling to his office despite the scandal.

  Now the media had returned to the subject years later, but this time, survival wasn’t an option for Keeley. No amount of influence could shield him from a bullet. According to what she’d heard around the office and on the news, about a month ago, his new girlfriend had attempted to break up with him, and Keeley had gone into a rage. Unlike his ex-wife or any of the other women he might have battered during his life, this girlfriend had a gun. And she used it. After his death, when he was no longer politically useful, his former allies and connections distanced themselves from him, leaving the whole mess to the police and the DA’s office to sort out. The official conclusion had been that the shooting was in self-defense, and the girlfriend, a woman named Brooke Raines, had not been charged with a crime.

  “You’re his daughter?” Jessie said. She recalled now that Keeley had had a teenage daughter with his ex-wife. Caroline Keeley.

  Carrie nodded. The girl finally pulled her hands away from Jessie’s. She wiped her eyes.

  “I don’t think I’m the right person to talk to,” Jessie said carefully. “I sympathize with the pain you must be feeling at the loss of your father, but—”

  “I don’t want sympathy. I want Brooke Raines to go to prison. She killed my dad. Isn’t that what prosecutors are supposed to do—send killers to prison?”

  “Your father’s case wasn’t that straightforward, Carrie. I can give you the phone number of the police—”

  “My mom and I talked to the police. A hundred times. They won’t listen to us.” Carrie shook her head and looked away, lips trembling. “And the DA’s office? They won’t even return our calls. That’s why I had to come here. It was the only way to get one of you fucking people to talk to me.”

  The girl’s use of the F-word, which she flung bitterly from her lips, did not shock Jessie as much as the mention of her mother. She was familiar enough with the case to know that Keeley’s ex-wife had admitted, after his death, that the injuries in the photograph had been inflicted by Keeley. That information had supported the decision not to charge Brooke Raines.

  “Carrie, are you aware that your mother confirmed to the police that during their marriage, your father had been ... violent with her on more than one occasion?”

  “You don’t need to tiptoe around it. My dad beat my mom. But he never beat this other woman. After my mom left him, my dad sought help. He stopped drinking and he learned to control his anger and—” She stopped abruptly, maybe because she could read the skepticism in Jessie’s face. “I know he didn’t hurt Brooke Raines.”

  Jessie hesitated, then said, “How can you know that?”

  “You’re not listening to me. What he did to my mom, that’s not relevant now! He’s not like that anymore. He changed!”

  Jessie raised her hands, palms outward. “Okay. I understand that you believe that. And it’s natural that you would want to believe that, because he’s your father. But you don’t know for sure that he never attacked Brooke Raines, do you? She claims he did, and that on the night of his death, he would have killed her if she hadn’t defended herself.”

  “It’s not true!”

  Jessie tried to remember the details of the case. “They were fighting because she broke up with him. I’ve worked on domestic violence cases before. The threat of a breakup is a common trigger.”

  “She’s a liar,” Carrie said.

  A loud rapping on the door made both of them turn. Jessie remembered her interview. Madeline Grady, a 2-L looking for a summer internship at the DA’s office, was waiting on the other side of the door. Jessie felt her jaw clench. An interview for a summer job seemed absurdly inconsequential next to the subjects she and Carrie were discussing, and she didn’t want to dismiss this girl who was in such obvious emotional turmoil. But she had other responsibilities, too.

  “Carrie, let me give you my business card, okay? You can call me later, and we can continue—”

  “No. I’m not leaving until you agree to prosecute that woman.”

  “I can’t agree to that. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have the authority to make that decision right now.”

  “Even if you wanted to?” Carrie echoed. “Meaning, you don’t want to.”

  Another few knocks, louder this time.

  “It’s not about what I want. It’s about the law. You’ve heard the phrase ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ right? If we were to prosecute Brooke Raines, we would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did not act in self-defense. Proving a negative is difficult enough even when the facts are in our favor. In this case, the facts are not in our favor. The evidence supports Ms. Raines’s statement. And your father’s history speaks for itself.”

  “His history. The past. The police are wrong,” Carrie said. “Or they’re dirty.”

  “I work with the detectives in the Homicide Division every day. They’re good people.”

  “You work with the detective on my dad’s case? Kyle Fulco?”

  “No. I mean, I know his name, but I haven’t had an opportunity to work directly with him yet—”

  “He’s an idiot,” Carrie said. “Or corrupt.”

  Jessie shook her head. “I can tell you that’s not true.”

  “Can you?” Carrie said. “Did you talk to any witnesses? Did you see any evidence?”

  A third round of knocking was too much for Jessie to ignore. “Give me a second.” She stood from her chair, crossed the small interview room, and opened the door a crack. A young woman in a blue suit stood just outside the door, portfolio in hand and anxiety on her face. “I’m sorry,” Jessie said. “I just need a few more minutes, okay?”

  The woman nodded—what choice did she have?—and Jessie closed the door. She turned to Carrie, who had also stood from her chair.

  “You’re right that I didn’t talk to any witnesses myself,” she said slowly, “and I didn’t personally see the evidence. But I can tell you that the police did their job. Now, I’m sorry, but I need to ask you to leave. I have an interview and—” Carrie’s face seemed to crumple in on itself. Jessie found herself reaching for her arm. “Look, you have my number. If you have any other questions, or just want to talk, call me.”

  “You don’t even care about the truth.”

  Jessie opened the door, and, with a final look that was equal parts anger and despair, Carrie Keeley hurried out past the waiting law student, almost knocking the portfolio out of the woman’s hand. Madeline Grady watched the departing teenager with confusion. br />
  “Come on in,” Jessie said. “I’m sorry about the delay.”

  Jessie came around the table and returned to her own seat. She picked up the resume and prepared to ask the first question she asked of all the students seeking internships with the DA’s office: “So, Madeline, why don’t you start by telling me why you want to be a prosecutor?”

  She didn’t hear the woman’s answer, though, because in her head, she was asking the same question of herself.

  2

  “It sounds like the interviews went well,” Warren Williams said the next morning.

  He’d asked her to meet in his office, ostensibly so she could fill him in on the previous day’s recruiting efforts, but more likely—she suspected—so she could assure him that losing a whole day to interviewing would not impact her cases. She didn’t hold his indifference against him. She knew that as the head of the Homicide Unit, he was under constant pressure to demonstrate the efficiency of his division.

  Warren looked like a man under constant pressure. Overweight, balding, perpetually red-eyed and tired—he looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. And maybe that’s what it felt like to run the most high-profile unit in the DA’s office, constantly under scrutiny. As ambitious as she was, Jessie didn’t envy him his job. She loved being a prosecutor, but preferred to steer clear of the political aspects of the office to the extent possible.